The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are sometimes used to manipulate tables that are displayed on a display.
Exemplary actions that a user may need to perform on a table include selecting a range of cells in the table, adjusting width of columns, adjusting the height of rows, sorting the contents of the table based on the contents in the cells of a single column or row, copying the contents of cells and/or cutting and pasting the contents of cells. A user may need to perform such actions on tables in wide variety of situations, including in a file management program (e.g., Finder from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), an image management application (e.g., Aperture or iPhoto from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a digital content (e.g., videos and music) management application (e.g., iTunes from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a drawing application, a presentation application (e.g., Keynote from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a word processing application (e.g., Pages from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a website creation application (e.g., iWeb from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), or a spreadsheet application (e.g., Numbers from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.).
But existing methods for performing table manipulations are cumbersome and inefficient. For example, a sequence of individual inputs may be required to directly manipulate cells in a table or navigate through menu hierarchies to locate a command to perform the desired manipulation. Such a sequence of individual inputs is tedious and creates a significant cognitive burden on a user. In addition, existing methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.